John Davenport Sheffield (1879 – 13 March 1915) was an English amateur

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby le ...

who played in

the Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engla ...

for Burton United and Leicester Fosse as an outside right.

Personal life

Sheffield apprenticed as an architect and surveyor and as of 1911 was assisting his family in the running of the Railway Hotel, Coalville. He served as a corporal in the Leicestershire Regiment (later the

Royal Leicestershire Regiment The Leicestershire Regiment (Royal Leicestershire Regiment after 1946) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, with a history going back to 1688. The regiment saw service for three centuries, in numerous wars and conflicts such as both W ...

) during the

Second Boer War The Second Boer War ( af, Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the Sout ...

. He later rejoined the regiment soon after the outbreak of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

in August 1914. On 13 March 1915, while serving with the 2nd Battalion of the regiment, Sheffield was shot in the head and killed by a

sniper A sniper is a military/paramilitary marksman who engages targets from positions of concealment or at distances exceeding the target's detection capabilities. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with high-precision r ...

on the final day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. He is commemorated on the

Le Touret Memorial The Le Touret Memorial is a World War I memorial, located near the former commune of Richebourg-l'Avoué, in the Pas-de-Calais region of France. The memorial lists 13,389 names of British and Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave who were kill ...

Career statistics

References

1879 births 1915 deaths People from Coalville Footballers from Leicestershire English men's footballers Men's association football outside forwards Coalville Albion F.C. players Whitwick White Cross F.C. players Coalville Town F.C. players Burton United F.C. players Leicester City F.C. players Loughborough Corinthians F.C. players Coalville Swifts F.C. players English Football League players British Army personnel of World War I Royal Leicestershire Regiment soldiers British military personnel killed in World War I British Army personnel of the Second Boer War Deaths by firearm in France Military personnel from Leicestershire {{England-footy-forward-1870s-stub